Monitoring Cache Clients from API

A new API is introduced to monitor cache clients connected with a cluster. Using this API, a list of connected clients can be fetched, and notifications can be registered when any new client connects or any existing client disconnects.

Optimized Client Cache

The client cache now has an optimized way of synchronizing itself with the clustered cache. Instead of receiving an event on each update made to the clustered cache, the client cache can now receive events in bulk at a configurable interval. This reduces traffic and memory usage.

Same Name Caches across Bridge

The NCache bridge topology can now have caches with identical names.

Distributed Cache Loader

The cache loader in NCache can now run on multiple nodes which speeds up cache loading.

FIPS-Compliant AES Encryption

FIPS-Compliant AES encryption is introduced in SP2.

ASP.NET Core Session Provider

NCache in Azure Marketplace

NCache Professional edition server (4.6 SP1) is now available in the Azure marketplace. Download the free NCache Cloud Client installation file here and install it on your cloud application VM. Azure charges monthly based on hours of use. There are no up-front costs. Optional NCache and Azure support is available separately. For NCache support please contact sales@alachisoft.com.

NCache Professional and Enterprise editions can also be used in Azure using the "Bring Your Own License" model. After purchasing a perpetual license from NCache, download the NCache installation file and install it (both server and clients) on the Azure VM of your choice. Azure charges monthly for the VM based on hours of use.

NCache in Amazon Web Services (AWS)

NCache Professional edition server (4.6 SP1) is now available in the Amazon Web Services marketplace. Download the free NCache Cloud Client installation file here and install it on your cloud application VM. AWS charges monthly based on hours of use. There are no up-front costs. Optional NCache and AWS support is available separately. For NCache support please contact sales@alachisoft.com.

NCache Professional and Enterprise editions can also be used in AWS using the "Bring Your Own License" model. After purchasing a perpetual license from NCache, download the NCache installation file and install it (both server and clients) on the AWS VM of your choice. AWS charges monthly for the VM, based on hours of use.

Big Data In-Memory Processing

MapReduce in NCache will allow developers to write programs that process massive amounts of unstructured data in parallel across a NCache cluster. To distribute input data and analyze it in parallel, MapReduce operates in parallel on all nodes in a cluster of any size.

Entry Processor: NCache provides the ability to execute users' code on server side against a set of cache entries. Entry processors can modify cache entries on the server side without involving these entries to travel on the network for fetch and update operations.

Live Upgrade of NCache

NCache 4.4 SP2 can be upgraded to NCache 4.6 without losing any data using its Bridge topology.

Query Optimizations

Data Reader: Queries can now be executed on cache using data reader just like the databases do. Using data reader, result set can be retrieved from servers in multiple chunks of configurable size. This approach gives a better performance and uses less memory on client end.

Order-by-Clause: Select statements can now have orderby clause which will return the result set sorted on one or more specified attributes.

Log Viewer Tool

A GUI tool to view and monitor logs generated by NCache server and clients in one place. Log files of all servers can be viewed in same tool. The tool can filter log entries and important log entries can also be bookmarked.

Other Enhancements

Object Data Format: NCache cache can now be configured to store data in objects form. By default, all data is stored in binary form.

Separate Process for Cache: Each cache in NCache is now hosted in its own process which runs independent of all other caches. Management of this process is done via NCache service which has information about all the cache processes running on the machine.

Cache Level Default Expiration: User can now configure NCache with default named expirations. NCache server will use default expirations when items are either inserted into cache without any expirations or inserted explicitly with named default.

DumpCacheData Tool

NCache now provides a tool through which a dump of the cache data can be written to a location specified by the user. This tool is designed for customers that need to restart their cache servers and they want to save their business critical data being held in the cache before restarting. The DumpCacheData tool enumerates cache data in a running cache and stores this data to any specified location. This data can then be reloaded to a new cache or the same cache.

LINQPad Integration

NCache provides integration with the popular .NET utility, LINQPad so you can use LINQPad to query cache data. The resulting data is shown in the LINQPad console in tabular form. LINQPad is a software utility often used to interactively query SQL databases using LINQ, as well as to interactively write C# without the need for an IDE.

HotApplicable Settings in Service Configuration

Some settings in NCache can now be changed on running caches without the need to restart the cache. We call this "HotApplicable". Previously, changing settings in the service configuration file, such as NCacheServer.LicenseLogging and NCacheServer.EnableDebuggingCounters required restarting the cache. The list of HotApplicable settings are provided here.

Visual Studio Integration

NCache can now be integrated with Visual Studio 2010/2012/2013 (Enterprise & Community). Basic management and configuration operations can now be performed within the Visual Studio. NCache Developer installation now comes with an 'NCache Manager' extension which helps developers manage NCache from Visual Studio.

Entity Framework 6.0 Support

Entity Framework 6.0 and 6.1 integration is provided in NCache. NCache also provides caching extensions for Entity Framework 6.0 which allows developers more control over which entities to cache. This is available for developers who want greater control over the entities being cached, as an alternate to the 'no-code-change configuration' option.

Windows Server 2012 R2 Certification

NCache is certified for Windows Server 2012 R2. It has been tested by Microsoft's approved tester and passed all compatibility tests. Microsoft validated that NCache works in accordance with Microsoft's standards.

NCache SDK NuGet Package

NuGet is a package manager for Microsoft Visual Studio development in .NET. The NuGet Gallery is a central repository of all NuGet packages.

A NuGet package is provided for developers to build applications using NCache without installing NCache on their machines. With this package, developers can write their applications using an NCache API and test them with InProc cache. This gives you full control to use NCache SDK without installing it.

NCache is Now Open Source

NCache is also available as Open Source. NCache Open Source is released under the Apache 2.0 Open Source license. This provides the .NET developer community with unrestricted access to a truly elastic native .NET Distributed Cache. For more details please refer to the Edition Comparison page.